I can’t stand looking at this thing. I open a webpage—almost any webpage—just to get it off my screen. If the font was any more vanilla, it’d have bean chunks in it. Which would be an improvement. There is absolutely not one iota of style behind this logo. Or in front of it, where it’s so desperately needed. It is totally devoid of any creativity. It’s as if the execs at Google stopped by “The Two-Minute Logo Store” on the way to work.

The one saving grace, however, is that this is a good lesson for art and design students on how not to do a logo.

Understand that I’m not blaming the logo designers. Had management left them alone I’m sure they would have come up with a thousand better ideas, and probably did. No, I blame whomever gave this bland ugliness the green light. It was probably the same person(s) who blessed the world with Windows 8.1.

So, Google execs, get a clue. Yes, you folks are brilliant and seemingly flawless at business. That’s what you know how to do. But the next time you need some ideas and want to see images for good logo design, Google those last five words. You’ll see your old logo.